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More Teens Smoking Pot Than Cigarettes

Jim Liebelt

Jim Liebelt's Blog

2010Dec 15

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More U.S. teens may be smoking marijuana than cigarettes but fewer are binge-drinking, federal health officials said Tuesday.

An annual survey on drug use, Monitoring the Future, conducted by a
team of social scientists at the University of Michigan's Institute for
Social Research, found increases in marijuana use among all age groups
but showed slightly fewer high school seniors were smoking than in
recent years.

These high rates of marijuana use during the teen and pre-teen years,
when the brain continues to develop, place our young people at
particular risk," National Institute for Drug Abuse director Dr. Nora
Volkow said in a statement.

The survey of 46,482 students from 396 schools found that 16 percent
of eighth-graders, typically 13 and 14 years old, admitted to using
marijuana, up from 14.5 percent in 2009.

More than 21 percent of high school seniors, aged 17 and 18, said
they had used marijuana in the past 30 days, while 19.2 percent said
they smoked cigarettes. This is the first time marijuana use has passed
cigarette use in the survey.

The survey found binge drinking, defined as having five drinks or
more in a row, was down. Just over 23 percent of high school seniors
admitted to binge drinking in the past two weeks, compared to 25 percent
in 2009 and 31.5 percent in 1998.

Federal officials were most upset by the marijuana data and said
teens may be confused about whether marijuana is safe and acceptable
because several states have recently legalized the use of marijuana with
a doctor's prescription.